MentalEdge

What? No way!

/s

No one is being provided any avenues. These services do not work any better if you swipe based on looks.

My point is that none of it matters. The real problem is bigger.

Everyone has their preferences, and any current system that actually respects that and helps people find each other, will inevitably shift to blue-balling its users with people that are never quite what each person is looking for, because actually doing it right means you lose "customers".

Because of that, different "avenues" for different people to find what they are looking for, don't exist. For anyone.

No matter what you specifically need, matchmaking companies are incentivised to identify exactly what you are looking for, and then give you anything but that.

If things actually worked, it wouldn't matter that the service has pictures. If you don't care about that part, just swipe accordingly. As long as the people queued up for you are genuinely random (they aren't) you will find someone you like, and someone who likes you will find you.

Except that these systems explicitly do the opposite. You will be shown every person the system can find who is your type, as long as you aren't their type.

Meanwhile your profile will be shown to everyone who'd like you, as long as they aren't the kind you like.

This way, everyone gets the illusion that there's plenty of fish in the sea. While in reality everyone gets their own algorithmic fence between them and anyone with whom the interest might be mutual.

You absolutely can love someone because of who they are alone. And if you genuinely, truly, can "get it up for anyone", then great. Or maybe you don't have a need for that stuff in your relationships in the first place.

But as someone who is borderline haphephobic (the fear of touch), yet also absolutely have a psychological and physiological need for physical intimacy, loving someone as a person is not enough to automatically mean I'm also going to feel something physical.

It doesn't matter how strongly I feel about who they are. If I don't want to touch their body, no amount of wishing I wanted to, changes that.

And personally, I do need to want that.

Bots. Bots everywhere.

I have an inkling that would result in people speedrunning all the stuff up until they can see what someone looks like...

Looks do matter, and everyone has different preferences.

The problem isn't that people are judging people based on only their looks, it's that these companies have tuned their matching algorithms to match people who enjoy each others appearance, and specifically don't like each other as people.

In reality, for a satisfying relationship you need both. It's really hard to be more than friends with someone that physically repulses you, and it's really hard to be more than friends with benefits with someone you don't like as a person.

By specifically tuning their system to only give you one, and never the other, they keep people in the grind. You might be pretty happy using these apps for hookups, but even there the algorithm will actively be working against you stumbling onto someone you might wanna meet more than once, because they want you back to swiping for the next person asap.

The fact remains that the matchmaking industry is doomed to be toxic in a capitalist system, because actually being good at it, also means getting rid of your customers.

Oh! That's why I've been finding tiny channels with oddly well made videos lately.

Yes. And using restricting application access doesn't really work with normal package managers, but is easy with flatpak.

Fedora apparently has some functionality.

There is also an arch wiki page on the subject.

Linux systems are used all over for enterprise use cases, which means there is a robust user permission system. Usage won't be Googleable with stuff like "parental control" but more likely keywords like "user restriction".

Not sure if you mention your wife because she knows Linux and thinks it's a bad idea, or because doesn't know Linux, and still thinks it's a bad idea.

Of course, when your kid one day learns to flash an iso onto a usb, and install an OS, any and all parental control will be symbolic. Hopefully you've successfully taught your kid how to use tech safely by then.

You'll want to look into browser extensions and blocking websites on your router, as well.

I've never heard an implementation that sounded better than just a basic downmix to stereo that any old media player can do. Which is the other option.

And certainly not something that was better than using stereo audio to begin with. All the magic of hearing things from different directions can be fit right there, into the two stereo channels.

There are so many of these programs that claim all kinds of things, but even when they do just do HRTF based on actual surround sound signals, it's maddening how often they just fuck it up with some bs room filter on top.

These software application come with almost every gaming headset and it's the only context I ever see anyone use this stuff. And not once have I tried it and thought that using a headset in "plain" stereo sounded worse.

No fucking shit.

That's not what I'm saying. These programs don't do virtual surround. If they do, they do it badly.

Game engines DO use virtual surround, and do so much better, using it to produce the stereo signal directly.

These programs, at worst, pretend to accept a 5.1 or 7.1 audio source, and then downmix it, badly, to stereo. They might slap on a shitty room effect for good measure.

At best, they just take the stereo audio from the game, which is either already in virtual surround, or a stereo stream without positional data, and muck about with the levels a bit.

That's all they can do. Because what they claim to do, which is add surround when it isn't there, or improve it when it's already there, isn't a thing.

These programs don't "enable" virtual surround. The real thing is already in every modern game engine ever.

And if a game engine isn't already doing HRTF, some random program isn't gonna add it by "processing" the stereo signal the game IS producing.

To do that, the game engine would need to be providing all the sounds and source locations, walls that the sound is to interact with, etc. But guess what, if it supports doing all that, IT'S PROBABLY ALREADY DOING HRTF.

Yes. That random android tablet with the atmos logo on it definitely does some totally real processing to actually improve the audio coming out of its lil tinny speakers.

If you have a stereo headset, the absolute best audio signal you can feed them, is stereo. Any and all spatial processing can and should already be in there, because no, you can't just "process" it in there afterwards.

Games and movies that support complex audio standards only work right when used on multi-speaker setups. You can't just "process" it down to a stereo signal in a way that recreates that. At best, the result is as good as a correctly created stereo signal would have been in the first place.

We're talking about stereo headphones here. Feeding them anything other than a stereo audio signal was never an option. No matter what processing you do, it's still just two speakers slapped onto your ears. If you have a stereo audio source that didn't generate the signal with spatial processing, you can't just add it back in. And if it did create the signal with spatial audio, no additional processing makes it more better.

Do you not know what the word "arguably" means?

They cannot magically make new information.

That's literally what I'm saying. They don't actually do anything useful.

These programs don't "enhance" anything. They just make some parts louder and some parts quieter, which "ARGUABLY" means you're using a third party application to modify the game to work differently than designed (allowing you to hear things sooner than their set loudness was intended to allow).

HRTF will do a lot more for you than an equalizer or compressor could.

No shit. Just turn up the relevant game audio, dump these POS audio processors that pretend to be magic.